Korn collaborated with electronic and dubstep on album

Korn’s current CD, “The Path Of Totality,” may be the album that stands out as taking the biggest step in a different direction from the other records in the Korn catalog.

For “The Path Of Totality,” the band collaborated with a variety of electronic and dubstep artists, and the electronic rhythms and other elements give the new songs a notably different sound from most of Korn’s other music.

But to guitarist James “Munky” Shaffer, the new CD reminds him very much of how Korn approached its music at the outset of its recording career.

“When I think about the beginning of the band, when I think about the elements that inspired us, which was basically us taking metal and mixing it with hip-hop, I don’t really think this is any different,” Shaffer said.

“It’s just a fresh take on what we’ve been doing,” he said. “And we’ve always been sort of a band to push the envelope of creativity and just see what other elements we can include in this band without diluting too much of the original sound.”

The idea for “The Path Of Totality” CD emerged while Korn was on tour behind its 2010 CD, “Korn III: Remember Who You Are.” During that tour, singer Jonathan Davis did some occasional deejay appearances and started to discover the emerging electronica/dubstep scene.

“I remember he played some Skrillex songs, some songs off of the ‘Scary Monsters’ record that Skrillex put out,” Shaffer said. “And he was saying ‘Check this out. What do you think about us mixing our sound with some of this stuff?’”

Shaffer said his initial thought was that it sounded like a challenging idea. But one worth pursuing.

“We started out with a couple of Skrillex songs, and basically had him come to the studio and sit down and listen to some of the tracks that he’d been working on,” Shaffer said. “We chose one, and that was the song ‘Get Up.’ So that was the first song we worked on. And then everybody loved it, and we were really surprised at how well it worked.”

Initially, Korn expected to try to make an EP. But after Korn got word out to some additional electronica/dubstep artists, more song ideas came in and thoughts turned to the idea of a full-length CD.

Before all was said and done, Korn had collaborated with more than a half dozen artists, including Exision, Noisia, Kill The Noise, Downlink and, of course, Skrillex.

The CD that emerged is a different sort of animal for Korn. Yes, the heavy guitar riffs are still there, and there are plenty of metal elements. But the electronic elements give “The Path Of Totality” a whole different edge.

And while Shaffer said the band wanted to have the electronica/dubstep influence to be very apparent, another big priority was to maintain the essence of Korn’s angular and jagged metal sound.

“It was a challenging coming up with the balance, where the sound, the core of the band with the vocals, the bass sound and the guitar were still very much present (while) introducing the new sound and the producers,” Shaffer said. “I think one of the main challenges of bringing these two worlds together was the musical aspects of it, the choice of notes. We’re very particular about the choice of notes we use. So we just wanted to make sure it was still dark and heavy. Retaining that, I think, was the biggest sort of goal.”

Korn is on its third leg of a tour behind “The Path Of Totality” this spring. The group has a touring guitarist and keyboardist along for the ride and is able to recreate the varied textures in songs from the CD.

“As far as the new electronics stuff, we have this on a sampler and Ray is switching his drums, between those songs, he’ll be switching to an electronic kit,” Shaffer said. “Basically he has sample pads, so he’ll be doing all of that stuff. Our keyboard player will be taking on some electronics. They’ll be sharing sort of the dubstep elements on the new record.”

That’s not to say the new songs will sound exactly like the studio versions, though. Shaffer said he was initially surprised by how the songs took on a bit different flavor.

“We didn’t really know what to expect,” Shaffer said. “Personally I think it sounds better live. I think it’s more aggressive. I think there’s a heaviness, there’s a heavier Korn element. And I think it’s just the presence of the bigger, fatter guitars (live). That’s sort of the Korn element. Sometimes it’s like you take an album and you re-create it live and it’s not quite the same. But to me these are better live.”